Comparison of Interfaces Between Software Components

• US 20090144704A1
• Filed: 03/23/2006
• Published: 06/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dspace Digital Signal Processing And Control Engineering Gmbh
• Original Assignee: Dspace Digital Signal Processing And Control Engineering Gmbh
• Inventors: Hanselmann, Herbert, Stroop, Joachim, Niggemann, Oliver, Otterbach, Rainer
• Granted Patent: US 8,707,255 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/124
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44536 Selecting among different versions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for testing the compatibility between two software components of a control device network, a technical interface description being assigned to each software component, this interface description having a specified description standard, and each description standard having a hierarchical position in an hereditary hierarchy of all possible description standards. The common description standard, which is nearest in the hereditary hierarchy, of the software components to be compared is determined based on the hereditary hierarchy, and the common portion of the respective interface descriptions is determined based on the common description standard of the common portion of the respective interface descriptions and compared with one another.

Claims

1. A method to test compatibility between two software components of a network of control devices, with each software component being allocated to at least one technical interface description, having a certain description standard, comprising:

providing each description standard with a hierarchic position in a hereditary hierarchy of all potential description standards,

determining, based on the hereditary hierarchy the closest common description standard in the hereditary hierarchy in reference to the software components to be compared, and

based on the common description standard, determining and comparing the common portions of the respective interface descriptions to each other.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the interface descriptions of the software components of the network of control devices to be compared are compared based on determinations in the closest common description standard.

3. The method according to claim 1 wherein a hereditary hierarchy of all description standards is formed in that each description standard comprises at least a portion of a hierarchic higher description standard, except for the highest one, and has additions thereto.

4. The method according to claim 1 wherein an interface description of a software component of the network of control devices describes the technical features offered by the software component and/or the technical features requested.

5. The method according to claim 4, further comprising:

comparing whether the requested abilities of an interface are fulfilled by the offered abilities of another interface.

6. The method according to claim 1 wherein description standards of an interface description previously not allocated in the hereditary hierarchy are changed for an allocation and expansion of the hereditary hierarchy such that they have a portion in common with the existing hereditary hierarchy.

7. The method according to claim 1 wherein each description standard of the hereditary hierarchy is allocated to an interface manager used for comparing two interface descriptions, the interface manager being selected from the closest common description standard of two interface descriptions.

8. The method according to claim 1 wherein software components of the control device network are composed via a particular graphic network design tool, where the interface manager necessary for a comparison is determined and executed depending on the hereditary hierarchy during the operation of the network design tool.

9. The method according to claim 1 wherein a description standard of an interface description not having any portion equivalent to a description standard of the hereditary hierarchy is transformed via a transformer into a description standard, having a portion equivalent to a description standard of the hereditary hierarchy.

10. The method according to claim 1 wherein an interface description with a first description standard not having any portion equivalent to the description standard of the hereditary hierarchy is compared via a special interface manager to another interface description, with the interface manager temporarily transforming the first description standard such that both description standards have, at least during the comparison, a common closest description standard to the interface description to be compared to.